Mucosal erosions in the walls of the GI tract, typically referred to as ulcers or peptic ulcers, are a painful disease of the GI tract. Ulcers may occur in the stomach, doudenum and esophagus, etc.
Ulcers may be diagnosed based on various symptoms such as abdominal pain, or using tests such as endoscopies or barium contrast x-rays. For example, gastroscopy may provide direct visual identification of the ulcer and information related to the location and severity of the ulcer. Alternatively, a swallowable in-vivo device may travel in the GI tract, capture images of the GI tract, and send the images to a personal computer, workstation or portable recorder, where images can be analyzed and presented to a healthcare professional. The PillCam® capsule endoscopy system commercially available from the common assignee of the present invention, an autonomous swallowable imaging device similar to devices described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,009,634 and/or in U.S. Pat. No. 5,604,531, each of which are assigned to the common assignee of the present invention and each of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety, is an example device that can be used to capture and send images. The healthcare professional may diagnose the presence of ulcers by visually inspecting the images sent from the swallowable imaging device, which is also referred to as “capsule endoscope” (CE).
A capsule endoscope video may include tens of thousands of images that were captured during the capsule's passage through the GI tract. Often, most of the images in the capsule endoscope (“CE”) video are of healthy tissue and a much smaller number of images show pathological tissue, such that the reviewer may need a long time to identify images of diagnostic interest. An automatic detection of images showing pathological tissue, such as an ulcer, may save considerable reviewing time and increase the likelihood of detection of such pathological tissues by the reviewer.
Ulcers in the GI tract may have unique visual appearance. Typically, peptic ulcers are characterized by having a white-yellowish exudate region that is surrounded by an erythema region that is typically redder than healthy tissues.